Vocabulary knowledge plays a very important role in reading tests and reading research has consistently found a word knowledge factor on which vocabulary tests load highly. Tests of vocabulary are highly predictive of performance on tests of reading comprehension. The present paper intends to review in detail the relationships between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and EFL readin...

Little is known about language minority community college students’ depth of L2 academic vocabulary knowledge, including how it relates to their breadth of L2 academic vocabulary knowledge and the relationship to their L1 skills. This exploratory study was carried out with a sample of 10 language minority students enrolled in either advanced ESL language classes or introductory content courses ...

Vocabulary acquisition is of great importance in learning a foreign language. Since vocabulary knowledge reflects one’s language capability to a great extent, it has long been felt to be a crucial factor in language learning. However, vocabulary learning is also a major difficulty which impedes learners’ progress in language learning. This paper analyzes the impact of several factors on vocabul...

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical representations (semantic relatedness); as such, it serves as an output for the decoding process and as ...